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He knew that Weinstein had reached a sexual harassment settlement with Rose McGowan.

So that’s three right there, minimum. Tarantino explained that he chalked all of this “up to a 50s-60s era image of a boss chasing a secretary around the desk. As if that’s OK. That’s the egg on my face right now”.

So Tarantino has a little egg on his face. I suppose that’s something, although you’d have to say it doesn’t really compare with cowering frightened in the corner of some hotel room while a 20st monster looms over you.

A phrase that has floated into common usage over the past couple of weeks is “open secret”. Yeah, Weinstein’s behaviour was an “open secret” in Hollywood.

It’s an expression that makes my blood boil. A more honest usage would be “totally enabled”. Or “actively permitted”. Did people think that the expression “casting couch” meant a sofa that you stood on while you were fishing?

Quentin Tarantino says there's 'egg on his face' for not speaking up (Image: Mike Blake/Reuters)

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Within days of the scandal breaking, women started using the already established social media tag MeToo to share stories about all the times they’d been groped, lunged at and coerced into sex. About all the times their drinks had been spiked.

All the times they have been aggressively propositioned.

If you think this behaviour is disgraceful, I’d agree with you. If you think it’s in any way unusual, then that’s where we part company.

For the last few years, I’ve followed an account on Twitter called Everyday Sexism – which does exactly that.

Women share stories of sexism and harassment – everything from cat-calling and comments in the street to rape. As the account name suggests, there are new, awful stories every day. Every. Single. Day.

Donald Trump was elected despite leak of tape talking about sexually assaulting women

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So it’s time to stop saying Weinstein is a “beast” or a “monster”. For this is to suggest he is in some way aberrant, out of the ordinary, a crazed one-off phenomenon.

Granted he had the money and power to take things to a horrific degree, to buy, threaten and bully silence, but his behaviour is depressingly familiar…

It was a triumphant moment for the Weinsteins of the world when Trump was elected president after the Access Hollywood tape was made public. What was that saying to women?

That we could hear a man openly boasting about sexually assaulting women (the Access Hollywood tape is nothing less than that – Trump boasts of kissing and fondling women without even asking for permission) and have it dismissed as “locker room talk”.

If this is locker room talk, then it’s high time we changed the conversation.

Dozens of actresses have spoken out against the producer (Image: Getty)

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Because, guys, this is on us now. Don’t be like Tarantino. Don’t stand there for 25 years while friends of yours shout abuse at women in the streets or out of cars. Don’t stay silent when you hear stories about lunges in taxis or hotel rooms. Don’t watch a friend of yours persisting with a woman who is clearly not interested or too drunk to know what’s happening. Don’t enable the multitude of mini Harveys and Trumps out there.

In his apology-cum- confession, Tarantino goes on to say “what was previously accepted is now untenable to anyone of a certain consciousness”.

He says we must “vow to do better by our sisters”.

Well, I don’t know about the first part of that – the kind of sexual abuse his old friend Harvey engaged in was never acceptable to my consciousness or that of anyone I’d call a friend.

But we have to agree with the second part. We have to do better by our sisters. We have to hope with Tom Hanks that this will be a “watershed” moment. That Weinstein’s name will become “a noun and a verb – an identifying moniker for a state of being for which there was a before and an after”.

In fact, we shouldn’t just hope. Men should be doing everything in our power to make it so. This is on us now.